Find white stone, Cape Cod, Victorian, and brick ranch landscaping ideas among our 24 photo examples of landscaping a brick home.
You just bought a new home. Now, what can you plant in front of a brick house to make it shine? Do you lie awake at night thinking about color theory and wondering “How do you landscape a red brick house?” Do you wonder if it differs from how you’d landscape a tan brick home?
Before you contact any brick landscaping companies, plan what you want to place in front of, along the sides of, and in the back of your home. We’ve collected 24 brick landscaping pictures to provide you with ideas for what to do and one example of what not to do. You can find white stone, Cape Cod, Victorian, and brick ranch landscaping ideas among our 24 photo examples. So, let’s get started learning how to landscape a brick home to bring out its best.
Brick Home Landscape Design Ideas
1. At this white stucco home with a red brick wall in the backyard lines the property, while brick landscaping edging defines the garden alongside the home. Along its sides, the homeowner has planted greenery and decorated it with small trees, bushes, and flower pots.
2. If your small yard doesn’t accommodate much in the way of plantings, try hanging them on the wall as the homeowner of this home did. These red brick house landscaping ideas offer a way to use little space but feature a garden. Use hanging plants outdoors and in planters like this plow.
3. Larger yards can accommodate a garden. At this home, a brick wall encircles the garden line with flowers in pots. Using potted plants lets you landscape quickly and without digging. It offers a solution in areas where the ground freezes or includes inappropriate sand without enough loaminess to support plants.
4. This contemporary home exterior offers an example of brick house front yard landscaping with green grass meticulously landscaped to create an expansive lawn that offers a warm welcome to those who visit the home. Walkways and retaining walls of brick and stacked stone complement the landscape and offer points to traverse the yard without stepping on the grass.
5. Shrubs of various sizes surround this red brick house on all sides. The small hedges offer an easy way to landscape and lend a stately air to the home.
6. This suburban luxury home in Vancouver, Canada combines yard lighting with plantings to create a home exterior that shines at night and in the daytime. Artfully placed lighting enhances the semi-circular-shaped inner hedge. A larger exterior hedge protects the home from the street and prying eyes. A black, wrought iron fence surrounds the yard with an archway entrance to the rear yard.
7. Many ball-shaped shrubs dot the front of this home, and an accent tree welcomes people to the door in front of this stately two-story luxury home. Landscaping needn’t take on a complex form to look good. Well-groomed hedges complement any home. Choosing those that bloom with flowers in spring can offer extra curb appeal and seemingly update the home without the homeowner doing anything.
8. Don’t ignore your backyard. Create a backyard patio with a gazebo and an immense brick fireplace. Surround these hardscapes with small shrubs and flower beds.
9. Your home doesn’t have to be an opulent manor house to qualify for fabulous landscaping. This two-story suburban brick home offers a sunny yard surrounded by a mix of hedges and shrubs that also line the front of the home. A tree complements the small greenery in the sideyard.
10. Use hardscapes to break up the yard and create travel pathways, such as the walkway from the street to the home. This two-story brick suburban home dots its expansive yard with a mixture of shrubs and ball shrubs, a large tree in the front yard, and flowerbeds.
11. Shrubs surround the constructed front pond of this luxury home. A marble walkway approaches the home, using terraces to break up the path.
12. Here’s a side view of the same house showing its tropical plants and pond from the side. What makes this home’s landscaping work so well to create a unified look? The homeowner took the design all the way around the house, landscaping both side yards and the rear yard, too. Doing so makes even new construction look like an old neighborhood. Lush plantings offer ambiance. You can obtain an instantly beautiful yard by laying sod.
13. A pine tree forms the focal point of this landscape, while a tiny garden lines the driveway that runs alongside the home. Although this home features a small yard to its side, such as a townhome would, it does much with the space provided. The landscape design offers a garden, yard, and a mature tree in the pine that can double as an outdoor Christmas tree.
14. This posh home in The Netherlands offers unique custom-designed garden beds with pink flowers. The plantings line the sides of the two brick walkways leading up to the home offering direct travel to the home from the street and through the gardens, which protects them from damage from people walking on them.
15. At this large, modern, multi-level executive home, the homeowner meticulously maintains the green lawns and garden spaces. The landscaping uses hardscapes to break up the monotony of the green yard by using brown and gray bricks to create an interlocked driveway that complements the stone exterior and shingled roof. Adding wood garage doors increases the organic appeal of this home.
16. This large brick home in the suburbs features a stone entry serviced by a circular driveway with a massive flower bed in the center and a tree. Other trees dot the landscape and hedges run alongside the home offering a welcome respite from the world.
17. The lush lawn of this suburban luxury brick home affords the homeowner ample space for flowers, trees, and an outdoor kitchen in the rear. Hedge and shrub groupings increase in size as they move toward the edge of the yard, transitioning to trees at the yard’s edge.
18. This multi-family dwelling offers oval windows and a courtyard surrounded by a brick wall. Trees and hedges surround the front of the home and line its courtyard. Retaining walls and courtyard walls define outdoor space, similar to the way that interior walls in a home define room spaces.
19. A picket fence of white and green, the home’s trim colors, surrounds this small lawn in a drought-sensitive area. It uses drought-hearty grass and a brick driveway.
20. The natural stone steps and retaining wall in the garden of this home surround this brick home’s garden and lawn. This yard within a yard offers privacy to those using the garden. Defining spaces in this way creates a multi-use yard encouraging the whole family to enjoy the outdoors.
21. This larger home offers massive curb appeal with the hedges surrounding the home that enclose the garden-walled planting beds. Mature trees on the edges of the yard stretch taller than the dual chimneys.
22. Grouping of tall trees edge either side of this beautiful brick home. Its expansive green yard opens out in front all the way to the street.
23. Sometimes the location of the home does not lend itself to planting due to a hard freeze or hard ground. In these cases, you can use urns and small pots to landscape. This homeowner has only a few small ball shrubs planted but adds potted plants to the front to create interest.
24. A hedge surrounds this stately brick home and flowers line each side of its sidewalk. The landscape features mature trees edging the yard.
Yard Landscaping Ideas and Tips
Landscaping a brick home doesn’t differ that much from landscaping a wood home. These essential guidelines stand as a starting point.
- Write down everything that you want. Use a landscaping app to map it out. This provides you with a guide to your work or your landscaper with a starting point for your design.
- Divide the yard using hardscapes that blend with the home’s exterior. Use bricks or stone that matches what the home uses.
- Place the larger elements on the sides of the yard and transition them into the smaller elements in the center of the yard. When making the layout, plan the garden beds for the center of the yard and along the sides of the home.
- Vary the plant color, sizes, and types. This creates variation and visual interest.
Guidelines sound good, but how do you implement them? How do you make a sidewalk visually interesting? It’s not as tough as you’d think.
Brick Walkways
Use matching brick for the walkway. Lay it in a decorative pattern instead of brick after brick in a straight line. The pattern, such as herringbone or serpentine adds visual interest, and the walkway creates a focal point in the yard. Other options include basketweave, running bond, and stacked bond.
Brick pavers cost less than structural bricks and lay flat. The typical per-square-foot cost ranges from $4 to $8 per square foot. Excavate the pathway, then pour a graded base of one to two inches and add a layer of sand. Install temporary guardrails before laying the bricks. Expect a walking path such as this to take four to eight hours to complete.
Concrete with Brick Edging
Use brick edging to update plain concrete steps with an elegant look that without spending much money on the bricks. Red bricks against concrete offer a lovely contrast that combines form with function. You’ll only need a trench that’s one brick-wide, so it requires less excavation. If you do the job yourself, use a tool called a screed.
If you don’t have masonry experience, hire a professional to handle any yard that includes slopes and steps. These complex installations require expertise that goes beyond most hobbyists.
Use Eye-catching Brickwork
Keep your planting beds and flower beds neat and pretty by bricking them in with pavers. Surround small shrubs and flower plantings with pavers in an eye-catching design that adds to your home’s curb appeal. These tidy plantings enhance the home’s appeal and keep everything neat and orderly. A bed that measures about 10 square feet would cost about $200 to enclose.
Create an Outdoor Kitchen
Build an outdoor kitchen with a patio and seating. Include a working brick fire pit that offers warmth, a workable cooking area, and a focal point in the yard. Skip the pre-made firepit and have your mason or architect design one with spaced bricks for better ventilation. Building from scratch lasts longer.
Outdoor kitchens boost the resale value of your home. In chillier states like the Northeast and Midwest, the outdoor kitchen appeals even more. In those areas, a bonfire offers utility and a way to enjoy outdoor time in late fall and winter.
Check with your municipality to learn what type of fire pits it allows. Some areas no longer allow wood-burning fire pits. In these areas, you must use propane or natural gas. Those designs require additional work and a gas line.
Construct a Secret Garden
Use hedges or bricks to create a wall, then plant a secret garden behind it. This option creates a beautiful view for your own aesthetic. The decorative brick wall offers visual interest to passersby, while the garden itself provides the homeowner with an area of garden respite. Include features in the brick wall, such as a moon gate, an ancient Chinese symbol of wealth, or wood-capped pillars. Create multi-tiered flower beds in the garden that stagger the plantings, placing taller plants in the rear, medium-sized plants with massive cover in the middle, and small flowering plants in the bottom tier so they create a focal point with a color pop. Projects of this level require a professional to construct.
Create a Formal Landscape with Decorative Brick Columns
Flank a long driveway with brick columns that use the same color bricks as the home. This unifies the natural landscape with the home’s exterior and includes a special architectural detail in its design. Have the mason include a capital on the top of each column, an area intended for you to add ornament. The labor and materials for these typically cost up to $2,000.
For larger yards, also build a black wrought iron fence into these columns to protect the privacy and security of the occupants. This creates a safer environment for those with pets or children so they can play in the yard without concern.
In Conclusion
Building a house doesn’t completely create your home. You also need to landscape the area around your home. Avoid the barren landscape of our first photo. Add sod, plant trees and bushes, and add potted plants and flower beds. How you organize them remains up to you, but the time you spend on your yard increases your home’s curb appeal and its value at resale.